by S. R. Witt
Bastion, thrown off balance by the unexpected parry, pivoted in a graceless circle. His blade flew out of his hand, spun across the chamber, and slammed into the wall.
Yark pounced before Bastion could recover, throwing a brutal lunging blow into Bastion’s lower back. The kidney punch rang off Bastion’s armor like a gong, and my brother went down on one knee.
There was no blood, but Bastion’s armor was dented in six inches.
Yark roared and raised his massive club. He laughed, a horrible bellow that echoed through the chamber. I wanted to save my brother, but I couldn’t move; all of my energy was tied up keeping the thread of power from attaching to my pattern and roasting me like an Easter ham.
A stranger saved Bastion. It staggered through the ritual chamber’s doorway. A single horn jutted from the left side of its bald head. It trailed a cloak of greasy ashes in its wake, and its pale skin glowed with unholy power.
It unleashed a screaming volley of fiery missiles, each one brighter and louder than the last. The blazing darts struck Yark, again and again, driving him away from Bastion and toward the obsidian throne.
Who the hell is that? I wondered.
I didn’t have time to contemplate the mystery monster’s name. Corvus’ pattern was still filling, and without the Lens draining the power away, it wouldn’t be long before the cultists had it topped off. Even worse, the high priestess had turned her attention to the new threats and was preparing some nasty supernatural defense. Jarissa was in on the act, too, firing one arrow after another at Bastion’s kneeling form.
The priestess slammed her hands together, and a wave of seething shadows burst away from her. It struck the mystery monster in the chest and tossed it back out of the ritual chamber.
Jarissa’s barrage of arrows kept Bastion from getting back to his feet; all he could do was huddle behind his shield and pray she didn’t land a critical hit.
The thread struggled to break free of my control. The power flowing through it from the pattern was stronger by the second. Even without the priestess directing the ritual, the cultists kept on chanting and smashing themselves to bits. Until they were all dead, the power would keep coming. My heart ached, but I couldn’t do anything to help my friends. I had to concentrate on containing this power before we lost everything.
Jarissa made a bounding leap that carried her over Bastion. She landed and spun, facing his unprotected back with an arrow drawn.
“Hey, bitch!”
Mercy’s shout caught Jarissa’s attention, delaying her killing blow for one, brief moment.
That was all the time Mercy needed. She let fly, and her arrow hissed through the air and into Jarissa’s chest. The wargrai’s leather armor was no match for Mercy’s shot.
The arrow plunged deep into Jarissa’s shoulder. The wargrai archer unleashed an impressive howl that echoed through the ritual chamber.
A moment later, the rest of the wargrai responded with hunting cries of their own. They were close. Our time was just about up.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Thanks to Mercy’s cover fire, Bastion regained his feet and retrieved his sword. A cultist got too close to him, and my brother sliced the poor fool’s legs out from under her with a single backhanded swipe.
Not to be outdone by a puny human, Yark re-entered the fight. His helmet was cracked, and his breastplate was covered in deep, scorched dents, but he still had his club, and he wasted no time swinging it at Bastion.
My brother rolled away from the attack, bowling over another cultist as he scrambled to his feet. The ogre was nimble for his size, but Bastion was quicker and had plenty of room to maneuver.
I, on the other hand, was a sitting duck for the priestess who’d figured out where her real problem was and hurled a ball of black lightning right at me.
There was no way for me to dodge the attack, and I had no magical defenses to ward it off. It hit me full in the chest, and the world went black.
SPIRIT BOLT SKILL CHECK
Spirit Bolt Skill (10) + Wisdom (20) + d100 (74) = 104
vs
Wisdom (10) + d100 (53) = 63
Skill Check Result: 41
Degree of Success: 3
Spirit Bolt Damage: 5 points of damage x Degree of Success (3) = 15 Total Damage
SUCCESS! You have learned the rudiments of the Spiritual Defense skill. (Rank 1) ]
The attack knocked a big chunk of my health off with just one shot. There was no way I could sit around and wait for that to happen again. Though it hadn’t dislodged me from my perch, by some miracle, it stung like crazy and filled my head with a chattering echo that made it almost impossible to concentrate.
Even worse, my control of the primal thread was getting shakier by the second. It needed an outlet, and it needed one now.
So, I gave it one.
SUCCESS! You impose your will over the raw elements of magic and bind a primal thread to your target.
You have increased your mastery of the Threadweaving skill. (Rank 2)
You have mastered the Shadow Magic talent, and may ascend to Level 4 when you have gained the requisite experience.]
The primal thread connected to the priestess’ pattern and filled her with an unexpected surge of raw magical energy. Her pattern glowed like an overheating circuit board. Random flares of magic burst from her body on geysers of boiling blood. She opened her mouth to scream, but there was no sound. Her tongue melted like a salted slug, and black fire burned her teeth from her skull.
The power surging through her burned out every thread of her pattern, snuffing out her life as surely as if Bastion had cleaved her head from her shoulders.
Her body smoldered on the floor, arcs of black lightning jumping out of the bubbling flesh to strike anyone who drew too near. The cultists wailed at the sight of their leader’s bubbling corpse, and their screams rang through the ritual chamber.
I’d thought the priestess didn’t have much to do with the ritual, that she was just orchestrating the true believers to channel power into the crystal.
Turns out, she was doing a little more than that.
The power of the spell unraveled around us. The main thread, no longer bound to the priestess’ pattern, surged out of control once more.
Though I’d drained some of the power out of the crystal, it hadn’t been enough. The pattern overflowed, and mojo erupted in all directions. It blasted the stone walls of the ritual chamber with a series of lightning strikes that strobed through my Thief’s Eyes with blinding ferocity.
Without the priestess to guide the ritual’s power, the binding couldn’t be completed. All the energy I hadn’t stolen overflowed and destroyed everything in its path. The ritual chamber’s walls cracked, and massive slabs of stone sloughed off to crash to the floor.
Mercy shouted to me over the cacophony. “We have to go.”
She was right, but I couldn’t just leave. We’d disrupted the ritual, and Corvus wasn’t going to take over Frosthold, but that wasn’t good enough. I needed to secure this power so Bastion and I could complete the ritual ourselves to claim the Dominion over Frosthold.
Hanging onto the thread was taking too much of my attention. It was madness to think I could do anything else as long as I had to hold onto that live wire. I needed to tie it off. I needed some way to store all this power.
Finally, the Hoaldites were useful for something.
I didn’t even have to remove the stolen holy symbols from my inventory. I focused my attention on them, and their patterns were as obvious as neon signs.
Even better, they were meant to absorb energy and the thread attached to the first one without a struggle. I drew a series of threads from one symbol to the next, until they were all bound together. The thread would fill them up in series, like charging a battery pack, and I wouldn’t even have to concentrate on it until they were full.
See, I’m smart.
I shot a quick thumbs up at Mercy, who was still harassing Jarissa with a constant flurry of arro
ws, and shouted, “Cover me!”
Before she could ask what the hell I thought I was doing, I descended the wall like a crack-addled spider monkey. The instant my feet hit the marble floor, I sprinted straight for the throne.
The side effects of the botched ritual kept Corvus subdued. Her eyes flicked open at my approach, but she couldn’t move. The spell bound her to the throne, and she was helpless to do anything but watch as the ritual came apart around her.
The box in her hands held the key, I was sure of it. I reached in and closed my hand over a rounded, ovoid shape that fit snuggly in the palm of my hand. Twice the size of a chicken egg, it was still very clearly an egg.
Its surface was covered with exquisite carvings of scales. No, not carvings. Actual scales.
The egg was warm in my hand.
Alive.
I didn’t have time to think about what any of that meant. I needed to get out of here to complete the binding ritual somewhere I wouldn’t have to worry about the roof collapsing and crushing my skull.
Mercy slithered down from the ceiling on her spider silk rope. She hit the ground and fired arrow after arrow at Jarissa who snarled and ducked for cover behind a shield of scrambling cultists.
Yark lay on the floor near the room’s only exit other than the iron doors. His breastplate was carved open to reveal ugly, burnt flesh beneath. My brother stood before the ogre, head down, leaning heavily on his sword, which was no longer burning.
Mercy fired an arrow at Jarissa and punched another hole through Jarissa’s armor. The wargrai scout fell out of sight as I scuttled over to Bastion and hooked an arm around his waist.
“Come on, brother. We gotta go.”
“Hurts,” he said. His armor was streaked with blood and marred by massive dents. He was alive, but his health bar showed me that might not be the case for much longer. Judging by the damage to his armor, he’d taken a savage beating before he’d downed Yark.
In the distance, the wargrai hunting party howled again. It was a bloodcurdling sound, a primal victory cry that signaled the moment of their coup de grace.
Goodbye, Havelock, I thought, my heart heavy.
An explosion rocked the temple. The victorious wargrai howls transformed into agonized screams. Something shifted deep inside the earth, and a rush of wind blew through the wreckage of the iron door.
The little guy had done it. He’d lured the wargrai into the trap, then ignited the gas with this pipe kit. Havelock had some giant balls, I’ll give him that.
A tremor ran through the temple, and a slab of stone the size of a school bus calved away from the ritual chamber’s wall. It crashed to the floor and split the chamber in half, separating Bastion and me from our allies.
An aftershock sent countless cracks racing up the walls and jarred more stone loose from the ceiling. The floor jumped and shuddered, tossing cultists off balance and sending Bastion and me stumbling toward the only exit we could reach.
I didn’t know where the doorway led, but we couldn’t stay in the collapsing ritual chamber. Bastion shuddered and did his best to walk on his own. “Let’s go.”
As we left the chamber, Corvus screeched, an angry, wordless cry that made my blood run cold.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
We didn’t stick around to see if the nightspawn or any of the cultists were on our asses. If we were pursued, we’d deal with the assholes when they showed up.
At that moment, I was just happy no one was actively trying to kill me, and cave-in wasn’t crushing me
Fortunately, the tunnel leading away from the exit we’d been forced into wasn’t on the verge of collapse. The stone seemed stable, there weren’t many cracks and crevices opening in its surface, and I didn’t hear the telltale sound of rocks crashing to the ground ahead of us.
I slogged up the stairs, and Bastion followed on my heels. His heavy footfalls and clanking armor were deafening in the narrow hallway, but I was past caring about being stealthy. It was all about speed; as long as we kept moving, I didn’t care if we sounded like a marching band on the move.
The staircase climbed up through the earth in a tight spiral. The walls were natural stone with ancient tool marks plainly visible on every surface. The stairs themselves were uneven and far from level. Whoever had created this passage never meant for it to be used for a lot of foot traffic. Maybe it was someone’s secret escape route.
We had to take a break after a few minutes spent staggering up the staircase. Our health regenerated over time, whether we were resting or not, but our stamina needed a chance to refill, or we’d end up gasping for air and unable to move.
Bastion stretched and twisted, struggling to find a comfortable position inside his dented armor. “That ogre beat the hell out of me. I’m going to have to buy a whole new set of plate when we get back to town.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just get a hammer and beat your tin can back into shape. We didn’t get shit for loot on this little outing, so it’s not like we’ll have any spare cash when we get back to Frosthold.”
Bastion grunted at that. “We did get something, though, right?”
I’d shoved the Key into my pack. It was heavy and felt solid enough, so I wasn’t worried about it breaking. It’d be fine until we got back to town and finished the binding. “I got it.”
Thinking about the binding ritual reminded me to check the holy symbols I’d used as batteries for the thread. But I wasn’t going to do it standing on this staircase. “Let’s find someplace to hole up for a few minutes. I need to check something.”
We kept climbing the stairs, at a steady, reasonable pace, so we didn’t have to worry about our stamina dropping through the floor. I didn’t hear Corvus or any of her little buddies on our tails, so there wasn’t any point in running.
After a few minutes, we passed a narrow door set into the side of the spiral staircase. We kept on moving until we’d passed a few more doors, and then I ducked through one at random. A short, narrow passage led us to another door, and beyond that into a small room.
It wasn’t much, but I didn’t need much. Just somewhere to hide until I could finish filling the holy symbols with stolen mana.
Bastion closed the door behind us, and I took a look around the room. It was round with a high ceiling. To my surprise, there were three windows punched through the room’s outer wall.
A quick peek outside tied my stomach in knots. We’d climbed a lot farther than I’d thought, and were above ground level. We were inside a mountain, approaching its summit. A short drop from any of the windows would put us on the snowy slope. That would be a dangerous climb, at best.
I poked my head through the window and looked up. The mountain rose hundreds of feet above me. The tower must climb up to the peak and then exit to a road or path of some kind. With any luck, we’d be able to walk down the mountain and head home. It wouldn’t be easy, but we didn’t have any other options.
I shrugged out of my backpack and dropped it on the room’s only furnishing: a small table. It was time to get to work.
Bastion paced the room. His weapon was still clenched in his fist, though it wasn’t burning. “Now what?”
“Well,” I said as I pulled the holy symbols out of my backpack. “The binding itself isn’t finished. I need to gather up all the power that was channeled into that big crystal by the ritual so I can use it to finish up when we get back to town.”
The holy symbols were almost full. My little trick had worked, and I watched as the primal thread filled the fourth symbol and the overflow poured into the fifth. I could get used to this magi stuff.
My brother flopped down in the chair across the table. “And then what happens?”
This decision had been niggling at the back of my mind for the whole trip. On the one hand, if I bound the key to myself, I wouldn’t have to worry about trusting anyone. I’d be in charge.
On the other hand, I was a pretty shitty leader. My decisions had ended up with a split party, and I had no idea if any of us
were going to survive. If I had a whole Dominion to control, I’d probably end up killing everyone in town.
Plus, being the boss sounded like a ton of work. I’d hated it when I was on the hook for the Shadows and the Hoaldites. It would be much worse when I had to answer to a city council and a whole bunch of angry townsfolk. Visions of spreadsheets and resource management and boring meetings flitted through my thoughts, tightening the screws on my headache.
There was also my growing disgust with all forms of authority. I didn’t want anyone in charge of me, and I didn’t want to be in charge of anyone else. The only reason I’d agreed to go after the Burning Codex, and kept on going even when the quest spun out of control, was to keep Frosthold free. I didn’t want a bunch of monsters or tyrannical priests running my town.
On the third hand, running the Dominion gave a person a lot of power. Managing city taxes was a good way to skim off a good living, and careful husbanding of resources could generate a lot of income for the man in charge. I’d stolen the Key, and the thought of turning it over to someone I didn’t know rankled.
That only left one choice. I fished the egg out of the bottom of my backpack and placed it on the table between us. It hummed with restrained power and throbbed with a pulsing rhythm. “You want to be the mayor of Frosthold?”
Bastion eyed the egg and then turned his attention to me. “Are you serious?”
I pointed both index fingers at the egg. “That is the key. As soon as I’ve siphoned off all the power from the crystal, and get back to the Burning Throne, we can bind it to you. Bingo-bango, you’re the king of the Dominion.”
I’d expected Bastion to grab this opportunity with both hands. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d hoped to pull off when he’d pressured me into joining him in Dragon Web Online. His sudden reluctance to take charge of the matter put me on edge.
